


Regrowth

by Silex



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Humor, Ignores Prototype 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 09:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14493600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: After saving the city Alex assumes that he can wait things out with Dana, but the Redlight virus remains a constant danger, one that Dana is adamant that something needs to be done about. When she comes up with the idea of him making a vaccine it seems like a harmless enough idea...





	Regrowth

**Author's Note:**

> Looking through stuff I've written and not posted, I found this thing. It's humor, or at least I think it is. I really don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it, but reading it over made me laugh.

It had been a good plan, a simple one. There shouldn’t have been any room for it to go wrong, that alone had made it far superior to anything the two of them had come up with since his ‘saving’ the city nearly a month ago. In that time things had only gotten worse. Blackwatch was still there, albeit in greatly reduced numbers and the quarantine was still in full effect as they waited for the virus to burn itself out.

Except it wasn’t. There had been a week where it had looked like everything was going to be okay, the infected were less organized, easy for the military to deal with, the hives were falling apart and reports of new cases of the virus had slowed to a trickle. There was still a lot of cleaning up to do, so much damage to be dealt with, but it looked like Manhattan was going to recover. He and Dana had even started making plans to get off the island once things quieted down and the quarantine had been lifted.

He’d been keeping his head down, laying low and generally not doing anything to attract attention to himself. It was easy enough for him when he had Dana’s safety to worry about and a goal in mind. Once he had Dana as far from danger as he could get her he would be free to follow up on the numerous, twisting leads he’d managed to acquire on his bloody rampage through the ranks on Blackwatch. He knew that Pariah was out there somewhere and he’d decided that it was too dangerous to live, but it could wait until Dana was safe.

And, if Alex were to be honest with himself, he kind of liked things being normal, where the most pressing concern was getting Dana what she needed to deal with day to day life. Viral detectors were still very much present and Dana couldn’t disguise herself the way he could, so getting supplies through normal means was out of the question. Fortunately there were plenty of abandoned apartments and places where people wouldn’t be returning to anytime soon so he was able to manage. It was almost fun seeing what he could do with canned food and other nonperishables to cook for Dana.

That week had been the best time of his life, a short interlude of peace and sanity before everything spiraled to hell again.

Like someone had flipped a switch the walkers became more organized and hunters appeared once more. The hivemind, which had been a sort of mental void, the faint hiss of static between radio stations, returned. It was hardly there, just the softest of whispers compared to the previous roar, but if he listened he could hear it.

Taking great care he had tracked down hunters, consumed infected and tried to trace it to its source, but it was too weak, too disjointed for him to get a firm grasp of things. Either there was a new runner somewhere in the city, maturing and gaining strength as the infection it carried grew, or a natural mutation in the virus had done something in one of the few remaining lead hunters. He wasn’t sure and he didn’t want to risk doing anything that would draw Blackwatch’s attention to him and, through him, Dana. They weren’t quite ready to believe that he was dead, but with each passing day the idea was spreading. Acting now, trying to get to the bottom of what was happening, would ruin that, making things even harder for him to get Dana to safety once things blew over.

But with each passing day it seemed less and less likely that it was going to blow over anytime soon.

When new cases of the virus started appearing the normal military did the best it could do to deal with the infected, and then, after examining all other options, did the only logical thing. Troops were withdrawn until there was barely any military presence at all, just a few Marines and Blackwatch soldiers to maintain the quarantine while aid packages were airdropped in.

Officially the withdrawal was only until a vaccine was developed, at which point troops would be sent in to ‘retake the city’, but that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

More people were dying every day, dying of the virus and in desperate attempts to escape. Alex knew that he and Dana were running out of options, or at least Dana was. For him waiting things out would be effortless. Dana on the other hand was in constant danger, of either contracting the virus herself, or being killed by one of the infected, or starving if he wasn’t able to get her food, or freezing to death if the virus was still going strong come winter, or any one of the countless other ways to die in the zombie infested ruins of Manhattan.

Faced with the unpleasant reality of their situation he and Dana had largely stopped making plans for the future and started focusing on the means necessary to stay alive. He’d gotten her a gun, which she had looked him dead in the eye and told him that she’d never use, not even against a zombie. When he’d pressed the issue, explaining that he couldn’t always be there to keep her safe and that he’d feel better when he was out getting supplies if she had it she’d seemed to relent. By the time he’d returned the gun had vanished, along with the ammunition he’d gathered for her and she refused to explain where it had gone, only promising that the same thing would happen if he tried again. Because somehow he was the bad guy for wanting her to be able to defend herself.

For the sake of peace he’d let the matter drop and severely narrowed the range he traveled to find supplies.

He let Dana dictate the subjects that were safe to talk about, because he wasn’t that good at coming up with topics of conversation and didn’t want to worry her with his plans for the future, which would likely be dangerous and involve killing a lot of people. Most of them would at least deserve it, but that kind of talk upset Dana. Of course, what she wanted to talk about was distressing in its own way.

Like everyone else she had become obsessed with the idea of a vaccine. The problem was, she believed that the strain of Blacklight he carried was the key. He had yet to explain to her that he wasn’t so much infected with the virus as he _was_ the virus, and didn’t have plans to do so any time soon. This meant that she was certain that he could produce a vaccine. Because he couldn’t exactly offer to help with the research, this meant that she’d become convinced that he could manage it on his own. Every argument he came up with she would counter. He’d say that he’d need a lab and she’d mention the countless abandoned ones in the city. He’d say he needed resources, equipment, she’d counter that the resources were likely on the island, all he needed to do was look. The worst part was that she would offer to help him No, that wasn’t true, the worst part was her ultimate argument, the one she used to force him into actually going along with her idea, that she was in danger of becoming infected, of dying if he didn’t at least try.

So he did as she wanted and went through the motions of making an effort.

Except as time passed he became more invested in the project, because it gave him something to do and because of how happy the idea made Dana. When he came back to tell her about the progress he was making, telling her mostly lies, she was so happy, talking about how they could use the vaccine to save the people left on the island, to clear his name, force people to listen to their side of the story and put a stop to Blackwatch once and for all.

Why she thought a vaccine would do all this was beyond him, but he let her have her fantasies. Anything that made her happy made him happy.

And because of that he became increasingly sincere in his efforts, because sooner or later he was going to need to have something to show for it, and maybe, just maybe, it would give him a way to keep her safe.

He wouldn’t make a vaccine so much as a purified, refined strain of the Blacklight virus, one he could safely infect her with. She would become like him, except under controlled circumstances. There wouldn’t be memory loss because the virus would be entering a living host as opposed to a dying one. She would still be herself and that was what mattered. If the results distressed her at first he was sure that she’d get used to it in time, he’d adapted quickly enough after all, and it would give him a good argument against further attempts.

Putting the knowledge he’d gained from the scientists he’d consumed he did his best to create an attenuated strain using what resources he had available to him. In the end it was mostly guesswork and hoping for the best, but he did manage to come up with something that, if it didn’t work, wouldn’t do anything harmful either.

The only remaining problem was that Dana had become invested enough in the project that she didn’t want him to simply pick a person at random to test it on. She’d become increasingly convinced that ‘his strain’ was ‘harmless’ and therefore the vaccine he’d created from it would be safe no matter what. By that time he’d started taking her with him to the building where his lab was set up. She thought it was because he wanted her help, when in reality it was because knowing where she was made him feel safer. Having helped him had given her a sense of ownership of the effort, a sense of responsibility that he couldn’t for the life of him understand.

Caught in the dilemma of either admit that he hadn’t told her the whole truth about everything or coming up with an even more elaborate deception than he already had, he did the only thing he could think of.

He relented.

At her insistence he injected her with the strain he’d created and he consoled himself with the thought that what he had done had technically been his plan all along.

And everything had seemed fine at first. A little soreness and inflammation around the injection site was to be expected and it had gone away quickly enough.

Dana had been ecstatic, talking about how they had to start mass producing the treatment as quickly as possible so no one else died. He’d tried to get her to calm down, insisting that they at least wait a full day so that she would have a chance to rest. Because the truth was, he didn’t know what would happen.

There was a chance that the injection would work the way she wanted, as a vaccine, there was a chance it would work the way he expected it to and make her like him and there was a chance that it would do nothing at all. He wanted to know which it was before planning anything else out. For once in his life he wanted to stop and wait, see things out before taking action.

It was a strange situation to find himself in, one that blinded Alex to the obvious far more than Dana’s enthusiasm and smiles, that the side effects were a bit more severe than either of them had anticipated.

He’d noticed that she was favoring her arm, rubbing at the spot where she’d been injected long after the swelling had gone down and she’d told him that the pain was gone. When he asked her about it she admitted, hesitantly that her arm was still a little sore, but in the next breath she’d reminded him that it was perfectly normal after getting a shot and that he shouldn’t worry so much. It was when the soreness started to spread that she finally agreed that it might be best for them to go back to the apartment he’d set up as a hiding place for the two of them and rest, rather than continuing work in his makeshift lab.

By the time they arrived home there were slight muscle tremors, little twitches under her skin. At time it had been confined to her arm, but he was worried what would happen when it spread. Not if, when, because the soreness was spreading as well, a dull ache and maybe, just maybe, she was running a fever, but she reassured him that the worst part was that she was hungry.

So he’d cooked dinner for her and she ate what he made then asked for seconds.

He chose to take her appetite as a good sign, because though she tried to hide it, the pain and muscle tremors were clearly getting worse.

In his mind it proved that he had been right, that the virus was going to make her like him, except she would be lucky and remain herself. That was something he kept telling himself as he watched her eat, glad that for once she didn’t ask why he wasn’t joining her.

She tried to make her request for dessert a joke, because she was obviously distressed by how hungry she was and he tried to treat it as such to reassure her, even as he started planning what he would make for her. Everything seemed to back up his assumption of what the virus was doing to her, the increased appetite was because her body needed fuel for the changes it was undergoing, whatever they were. Half way through his effort at making something with canned cherry pie filling Dana had stood up and said that she was tired and that she was going to skip dessert and go to bed.

The shaking was so bad that he ended up needing to help her down the hall and into the bedroom. He could feel movement beneath her skin, not twitching muscles, but things sliding and rolling back and forth over each other, similar to what happened when he transformed, only internal.

He’d actually managed to get her into the bed, started to tuck her in when it happened.

Dana had time for one panicked scream that tapered off into a gurgling hiss as red and black tendrils raced in all directions across her skin, enveloping her as the virus finished transforming her body.

She thrashed and struggled making it hard for Alex to be sure about what he was seeing. With all the movement and writhing tendrils it was difficult to be certain, but it seemed that there was a change to her proportions, one that became more pronounced as the writhing mess condensed back down into a human form.

“Alex…what did you…”

Her words were slurred, her voice unrecognizable, but Alex couldn’t help but sigh with relief, her mind was intact, she had made it through the infection unharmed.

The tendrils began to recede, fading into skin. Dana froze, staring at her hands, a look of horror apparent as soon as her face emerged from the tendrils.

This had not been what he had expected, but it made a sort of sense.

His strain of the virus had a certain template it followed, why despite injury and transformation he always managed to regenerate to the same default form. It was why when his body had been shredded beyond recognition after dropping the nuke into the ocean to save the city he’d reformed perfectly despite losing the majority of what made him.

So it had done the same thing with Dana when he infected her, defaulting to the template it followed.

But her mind was intact and that was what mattered, even if the virus had transformed her into a perfect physical replica of him. It would be easy enough to fix, mostly, he would just find a female survivor somewhere in the city and…

“Take it easy, this isn’t so bad,” he started, trying to gather his thoughts and figure out where to start.

“What do you mean not so bad?” Dana looked back and forth between herself and him, her typical anger far more ominous given her new form.

The look she was giving him made it obvious that he was going to have to explain things quickly. Until that moment he hadn’t realized exactly how menacing he looked, but that was probably because the way Dana was walking over to him lined up far too well with the last thing so many of his victims had seen.

He tried again, “This was your idea, remember?”

That only seemed to make things worse. He could see tendrils twitching beneath the skin of her arms, mass redistributing itself so that fingers could lengthen into bone blades.

Getting out of the apartment seemed like the best idea.

Yes, he would explain things later, once Dana had a chance to calm down.


End file.
